[ILUG] [way OT] Word 2003 problems...

[Martin Feeney]

Ian Spillane wrote:

> Anyway. Nice day we're having. 

Fabulous weather, you're right.

> Why do people on mailing lists be so anal about everything. It reminds me of road rage. On the road people are rude and aggresive but you'd never dream of shoving someone on the footpath and giving them the finger. I think even in a room full of diehard linux users if someone politely asked for help flushing the fucking toilet you'd help out instead of going off to compose a lecture on the inappropriateness of the question. 

Well, it may be a bit more useful if you compare like with like.  Let's 
take your road rage analogy:

If you have a five lane highway with everyone driving the same way, it 
would come as a bit of an unwelcome surprise to find someone driving the 
wrong way on one of the lanes.  It'd be annoying for everyone else on 
that road as it causes delays, accidents and generally stops people 
getting on with the business of driving down that road.  The more people 
who decide to drive the wrong way down the highway (or maybe just park 
across a number of lanes), the worse it gets.  Pretty soon, the road has 
devolved into chaos and no-one can drive in the manner the road was 
first built for.

In a similar manner, Colm and others can see the impending pile-up and 
loss of value to the list membership and the linux community at large 
(many important questions have been answered in the archives and pop up 
on general web searches) as the completely inappropriate posts start to 
mount up.

Tangential posts are more akin to traffic coming in via slip-roads - 
there's a little bit of jostling, but the traffic keeps going and 
there's minimal disturbance to most.

Martin.